IS THE LEGACY OF SRI LANKA’S ‘INDEPENDENCE’ IN DEPENDENCE?

Sri Lanka, being a sovereign state since 1948, is celebrating its 75th year of being such a state today with much pomp and pageantry, lavishly spending millions of rupees from public coffers which could have been otherwise used on essential kinds of medicine and medical equipment to save those who are crying in hospital beds for nothing, but life, due to sheer want of proper medication.

However, some serious questions are worthy of being raised as to how truly ‘independent’ Sri Lanka is and how ‘in dependence’ it is after 75 years of selfgovernance as the country is sinking further and deeper into the doldrums.

ECONOMIC MELTDOWN

The country’s economic collapse is welldocumented. Extreme mismanagement and corruption have drained the country’s reserves and ballooned its debt. This situation, combined with certain global issues, was a perfect storm that left Sri Lankan officials taking the begging bowl into their hands for lines of credit and emergency supplies of food, fuel, fertilizer and medicine from its friendly nations. A country that had been almost self-sufficient in the ancient history now finds itself the international model of bankruptcy – ‘a land like no other!’

Today, Sri Lanka is largely in debt, with its foreign debt component becoming heavier and heavier each year as the country has never been cutting the coat according to the cloth, but merrily living beyond its means in the seventh heaven, being as optimistic as the proverbial penniless pauper who walked into a restaurant and ordered oysters for dinner, hoping to settle the bill with the pearls he expected to find on his plate!

Much of the debate going on about the technical reasons for the economic devastation that the country is pulling through is of no interest to millions of ordinary people who are compelled to forego at least one meal a day, if not two. Their natural concern is about shortages of food and other essential commodities and the prices that have gone into the stratosphere for whatever is available. The political leadership of the country is yet to explain in ordinary layman’s language why the country is in such a perilous and penniless situation.

Little do our leaders care that they have pawned even the yet-to-be-born future generations of the country without any plan as to how they are going to free them from such enslaving bondage by getting the economy back on a solid footing.

It is high time the country questions whether it should be celebrating its independence or lament its dependency to foreign governments, lending agencies and sovereign bond holders and also regret the lack of a planned, structured, economic vision that would have freed the country from this deplorable predicament.

POLITICAL CORRUPTION

Today, the cancer of corruption in the country has jacked up so much that one seldom hears about those in high positions of authority who are not corrupt! Can anything in this country be done without greasing somebody’s palm or being somebody’s somebody’s somebody? Rumours and hearsay about the level of corruption in those at the highest levels in the country, ending up in their living the life of Riley, no sooner than they enter politics, while the country’s economy is in ruins, has led many to hold the view that there has to be some fire for so much smoke to emanate.

As some measure to allay the generally felt and widely accepted view about corrupt politicians, all politicians from the highest office downwards should make public their statement of assets and liabilities, which they are required to do as per the constitution anyway, so that the public could discern fact from fiction, if indeed what is disclosed is fact and not fiction!

Also, lack of law and order tops the list of challenges that face the independent island nation, while mismanagement trails very close to that. Sri Lanka seems to have a law and order system manipulated in such a way that it allows whales and sharks to escape and roam scot-free but catches sprats and even smaller fish and punishes them with harsh sentences even for minor offences. Throughout the country’s postindependence history, it has yet to convict and punish persons in high political and administrative positions and also ones like the ‘masterminds of the

Easter Sunday Attack of 2019’.

The fact that 75 years of independence from the colonial rule has done only a very little good for us and for our country for which the responsibility falls mainly on those who have governed the destinies of this nation in the past few post-independence decades so blameworthily goes without saying as highlighted by the editor of a recent local newspaper in the words: “A discussion on Dhamma in Parliament is like a conference on animal rights at an abattoir, or a talk on chastity in a bordello.” The same courageous editor who well deserves our respect and thanks even went further beyond to the extent of saying: “The holier-than-thou frontbenchers of both sides of the Parliament have been displaying their knowledge of Buddhism, of late, by quoting extensively from the Sutta Pitaka, the way drunkards use lamp posts – for support rather than illumination.”

Any person who analyses the above two miseries befalling Sri Lanka within the framework of their interconnectedness will undoubtedly have answers to the ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘who’ and ‘how’ of the peril of the Pearl of the Indian Ocean!

No doubt, one must live with hope! But, when the obstacles to hope appear insurmountable, hope turns to despair. Today, after 75 years of independence, there is more despair than hope. But, let us also remember that it is never too late to have hopes of celebrating the centenary of independence in a truly independent Sri Lanka in another 25 years time!

Much of the debate going on about the technical reasons for the economic devastation that the country is pulling through is of no interest to millions of ordinary people who are compelled to forego at least one meal a day, if not two

FUTURE HOPE!

We, as a Nation, are in a similar situation like the one that Elizabeth the protagonist in the short story ‘Odour of Chrysanthemums’ by D.H. Lawrence faced, where she ultimately realizes the fact that no one, but she herself, has been culpable in her own misery and unhappiness. At the end, she submits to both life and death as her ‘masters’, humbled by her own mistakes and about to carry on with a new perspective.

Those who want change must first be ready to change!

There will always be some type of leadership in a country. If a good leader will not lead, a bad leader always will. Let us, therefore, be politically wise in using our right to franchise not to choose ones who are only worried about the ‘Next Election’, but to choose ones who are more worried about the ‘Next Generation’, so that we may guard against a similar error like giving the custody of his victims to a rapist!